In Deep Silence
by Clairavance
Summary: This is the story of a girl, who loved so much she burned the whole world, and while she laughed and danced in light, a ghost of a shadow enjoyed the sight. Julian POV. Adele inspired fanfic.
1. Heart

**_Chapter: Heart  
>There's a fire starting in my heart<em>**

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><p>Awaking from the dreamless sleep he'd been submerged into was like trying to break through to the surface of a tarry lake. The darkness clung to him like a sticky substance, forcing his limbs to move at a snail's pace. He met resistance with every kick and every stretch. It tightened around him and tried to seep into skin, tried to trick him into thinking he was going to suffocate if he didn't breathe it in.<p>

His head was pounding. He recoiled at the power of the dark around him, but he wouldn't let it in. He couldn't let it in. Not when he knew what he knew now.

He recognised the familiar coaxing of the things in the dark, and he strained against it. He heard his name. Again. And again. He followed the alluring sound like crystal bells clinking together. He reached up once more, gave one final kick; his lungs burst into action, filling with icy oppressive air.

His heart began to beat, and with it came the swarm of regret and pain and love that he'd been battling with before he'd been plunged into this darkness. He opened his eyes to see his elders dispersing from where he lay on the hard gray ground. Crocodile Eyes lingered until he sat up.

"The young," the Crocodile Eyed shadow man rasped out, making it sound like both an insult and a musing, before he evaporated into the shadows.

The small foetus-like shadow man remained the longest, standing quietly aside and watching. Their eyes met, and the foetus cocked its head to the side. The silence was deafening.

He didn't need to ask how he'd been brought back. Cutting his name from the Stave of Life cut him out of the family tree. What he once was, essentially ceased to exist.

He had no power.  
>He was no longer a shadow man.<br>He was broken, by all extents and purposes.

But he still had the memory of her honey-in-sunlight hair, her sparkling goldy-green eyes, the way she made his heart beat when he watched her. For now, her memory would be enough.

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><p><strong>AN: Because I'm anti-cliché, goremaggot!  
>Don't expect much from this fic, I just need to prompt a kick up my muse's behind to get it working for my novels.<strong>


	2. Shadows

**_Chapter: Shadows  
>Reaching a fever pitch and it's bringing me out the dark<em>**

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><p>It wasn't that hard to find his way to Earth.<p>

The runes still worked just as well for him in the Shadow World as it had before, and none of his elders seemed to care where he was going or what he was planning on doing. He understood. He was no threat to them any longer. He was now as much of a shadow in his world as he'd been a shadow on Earth. He was there, but he wasn't.

Nobody cared what he was thinking, and he was thinking that he had to put things right with Jenny. As impossible and pointless as it may seem to others, Julian knew deep within himself that he had to mend what he'd broken. Tom was no good for her. Granted, he'll admit that the guy had changed; but that was inevitable since Julian himself had been the catalyst for that very change. Tom was still unworthy of having Jenny.

Maybe he was, too, but this wasn't about him. This was about Jenny; her future, her life, her happiness, that was all that mattered. Julian had seen what lay ahead of her - caught a glimpse of it as he'd expelled his last breath along with his power - and it was not what he wanted for her. She deserved better. She deserved _more._

Without him in the picture, it was not going to be pretty.

That's why, on a chilly autumn evening, Julian found himself walking down the school hallway that led to the sports ground. As the football field with all its little pawns chasing after a ball came into view, he noted that the bleachers were packed with students. He knew all their faces, of course, because they were all at school with Jenny. But they looked different somehow.

Julian didn't waste time trying to pinpoint what was different about them. They didn't matter. He scanned the massive crowd, eyes flicking from face to face. There was the fake mannequin with her auburn hair and fancy clothes, drinking a milkshake, and the tomboy-feminist next to her shaking her dark fist and shouting at the players on the field. Jenny wasn't with them.

He swept across the field with his eyes; the brainless fluff was shaking pom-poms along with a few other girls. Jenny wasn't among them. Julian scowled and glanced at the field. Tommy-boy was on the team and running across the field as a bunch of other players chased after him. So if Tom was playing, Jenny_ had_ to be around here somewhere.

She wasn't. Julian spotted Michael intercepting the hotdog-and-peanuts girl halfway down the bleachers, but there was no sign of Jenny. No sign of that cousin of hers either. Maybe they were having a family thing tonight?

It was frustrating moving without his powers. Where before he simply had to think of Jenny to be at her side, now he had to physically move to his desired destination. It wasn't the same as walking; he was moving faster than that, but too slow to his liking.

The world had a firm solidity around him. He could feel the nip in the air, smell the dying leafs on the sidewalk, taste the promise of rain in the obscured clouds above him. The shadows were darker than he remembered, and the streetlights hotter, and the moon...

He watched the gleaming planet as he made his way through the streets to Jenny's house. It was mesmerising, the silver light piercing but not quite blinding; surely more beautiful than anything he'd conjured up before. He was so captivated by it that he nearly passed right by Jenny's home.

Her parents were watching television, her younger brother fast asleep in his bed. She wasn't in her room, but Julian lingered there for a long moment. The flowers on her windowsill looked radiant in the pale moonlight. He felt a flash of regret - his gift, his rose he'd given her...no wonder she'd thrown it at his feet. He would have, too, if he'd known just how beautiful her world already was. Anything he'd have given her would have been insulting. He could never match reality.

Her room was tidy, her walls plastered with photographs of her and her friends. There was a gap in the frame of photos around her mirror. Realisation choked the breath out of him; she was gone. Looking down at her dresser, he knew he was right. The mangy stuffed toy that Jenny adored - that thing that Tom gave her as a 'gift' - was gone, too.

For a long time, all Julian could do was stare at the blank spot where a photo of Jenny and her group of friends used to be. Where was she? Where did she go? Why did she leave? When would she be back?_ Will_ she be back?

He started going through the papers on her desk, tried to find her diary, tipped out her drawers, emptied out her closet. He hunted high and low for anything that would give him an idea of where she'd disappeared to, and came up with nothing.

Still hopeful, Julian ventured into the family study. Again he found nothing to aid him in tracking her down, and when he turned to leave the room, he was met with the ashen face and wide eyes of Jenny's father, frozen in the doorway. There was fear in the man's eyes, a fear Julian recognised. The fear of the unknown. The same fear that was chewing at his insides - he'd always had an idea of where he could find Jenny. Always knew who she might be with, what she might be doing, _what might be happening to her_...

"Where is she?" Julian demanded, advancing a step toward the man.

There was no eye contact, no sign that the human before him could see him or hear him. He was staring at the study with a dazed and frightened look on his face. Useless.

"Tell me where I can find Jenny!" Julian roared at the top of his voice.

The man's reaction was instant terror; he shrunk back as if Julian had taken a punch at him, his face went a sickly green, and then he was running down the hallway, shouting in breathless horror at his wife to get out of the house.

Julian was going to get nowhere here. He had to find Jenny, and he knew exactly where to start looking.


	3. Puzzle

**_Finally I can see you crystal clear,  
>Go 'head and sell me out and I'll lay your ship bare<em>**

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><p>They were amusing entertainers, at least that's what the majority of people thought about psychics. For others they were a beacon of hope, a means and a way to reconnect with the deceased. For the Shadow Men, they were puppets to play with.<p>

Julian was no stranger to them. He had, in times long past, loved to pull their strings, exchange knowledge for a way into this world. He gave them the dirt on whatever miserable soul came to see them, taught them how to read for certain signs and how to take cues - deception was a master art-form - and they got paid for it, famous for it. His kin were not as successful as Julian had been; they were immediately labelled demons and the door was shut on them. He, on the other hand, appealed to their vanity and they ripped their doors wide open for him. They also_ left_ the doors open. He would never cease from their dreams (and the odd nightmare), would have their thoughts return to his beauty time and again. In short, he owned them.

Nothing dies as long as it's not forgotten.

Julian wasn't one to believe in fate, or destiny. Those were human notions, things that didn't apply to him. Had he known he would one day be carved out of the Stave? Hell no. It was his curiosity in this fragile world that had him slowly, gradually slip his way in. It was his determination to manifest himself in a physical, earthly sense that had him pulled to Jenny's grandfather in the first place. He'd been a powerful sorcerer - as keen to learn more about the shadows as Julian had been to learn more about the runes - but human error was inevitable.

Everything he'd ever known had been turned inside out since he first laid eyes on Jenny. Still, one created one's own destiny, and he was destined to be with Jenny.

He was slightly zoned out, his thoughts dwelling on that first moment when he saw real sunshine - funny how Dee nicknamed her that...

"You're back! Haven't seen you in a while."

Julian blinked at the woman, wearing a pink and black leopard print dress and adorned in gold chains, whom had just walked through the door into her office. Her red lips turned up in a familiar fond smile as she removed her sunglasses and she almost waltzed over to the white marble desk where Julian had been waiting.

"You look different...somehow."

"As do you," Julian said, eyeing her short, spiky red hair. "How's business?"

"You're my first customer of the day!" she quipped and somewhat giddily placed herself on the high-back chair beside him. "How can I be of service?"

"I need you to go through to Cali, Vista Grande. Go to Jenny Thornton's house, demand to talk to her family, find out where she is."

"Is she in trouble?"

"You're the psychic, what do you think?" Julian retorted, and then with a bow and gesture toward the door, the woman was on her way.

It was a tardy existence, one that Julian didn't much like, as he drove with her in her Mercedes all the way from Beverly Hills. When they pulled up outside the ranch-style house it was to find Jenny's father busy mowing the small front lawn and Joey, along with a few of his little friends, playing basketball on the driveway. Jenny's father wasn't very happy to see the psychic, even less so when she claimed Jenny was in danger and lest he reveal where she was, Jenny might suffer.

He had come to lean up against the small gate, acting as a buffer between his house and this woman, and wiped sweat from his forehead.

"Look, lady, I don't know who you are or how you know Jenny, but my daughter is safe. I would know if she were in any sort of danger. I'm her father!"

"Please, sir-"

"He's not going to tell,"Julian muttered, looking up and down the mid-day shadowed street. "We'll go to her cousin. He'll tell us, if he knows anything."

"-alright." The woman let out her breath, disappointed. "Thank you for your time, Mr. Thornton."

"We gave up too easily," she said once they were in the car.

Julian sat in silence as they drove to Zach Taylor's house. He was, as Julian had expected, at home. His reception of the psychic was the opposite of Mr. Thornton's. He invited them in with a smile and led them to the dark room in his garage.

"So, you said you're looking for Jenny or you've got a message for her or something?" Zach was saying as they stepped into the red and shadowed room.

"I fear she may be in danger and it's important that I reach her as soon as I can."

Julian frowned at the photos Zach was still developing and those he had pinned up to dry. Slowly the images became more clear - one of Jenny and her friends posing at the pine tree outside her house. Jenny smiling at a carousel. Jenny at an airport, giving a quick wave to the camera - and the words 'Flight 027 to Pittsburgh Now Boarding.'


End file.
